Polygamist leader gets life in prison for assault

[August 10, 2011]  SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) -- Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs recorded everything he said. Thousands of pages, written with biblical flourish, about God wanting him to take 12-year-old wives. About those girls needing to sexually please him. About men he banished for not building his temple fast enough.

Facing his last chance to keep his freedom, Jeffs didn't say a word.

He was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for sexually assaulting one of his child brides -- among 24 underage wives prosecutors said Jeffs collected -- and received the maximum 20-year punishment on a separate child sex conviction. Jeffs, 55, will not be eligible for parole until he is at least 100 years old.

The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints made no plea for leniency. He ordered his attorneys not to call witnesses during the sentencing phase, and forbade them from making a closing argument Tuesday.

Less than half an hour later, jurors returned with the harshest punishment possible.

"He's a pervert, and the crazy thing is, he perverted his own religion," his sister, Elaine Jeffs, said after the sentencing. Nearby, police escorted her brother into a waiting patrol car.

Elaine Jeffs, who left the FLDS in 1984, watched the end to an often bizarre and graphic two-week trial. Other onlookers included one of Jeffs' top lieutenants and state caseworkers who rounded up nearly 400 children during a 2008 raid at the sect's Texas ranch. There were a handful of spectators as well, including a retired couple who also sat in on the Casey Anthony trial in Florida.

Despite the convictions and life sentence, Jeffs remains in control of the FLDS and its roughly 10,000 followers. His most devoted consider him God's spokesman on earth and a prophet, but his followers were absent in court for the bulk of the trial.

Jeffs sometimes was, too. He boycotted the sentencing phase, remaining in a courthouse holding cell, and refused to answer state District Judge Barbara Walther when directly questioned Tuesday. Jeffs had represented himself during the conviction phase, and often interrupted court proceedings by contending that he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs.

The FLDS is a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism and believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. In closing arguments, prosecutors rejected the idea that the sect had been targeted.

"The evidence in this case shows that this isn't a prosecution of a people," prosecutor Eric Nichols said. "This is a prosecution to protect people."

Jurors ignored reporters after the sentencing, quickly walking to their cars that were parked single-file in a blocked-off street and driving away.

Willie Jessop, a former FLDS spokesman who railed against Texas authorities following the raid but has since disavowed Jeffs, said the heinousness of the charges has left a fractured FLDS community. He said his first goal would be tearing down the guard tower and gates at the Yearning for Zion ranch, which authorities stormed in 2008 and where they collected a trove of evidence against Jeffs.

That included photos of him kissing the young brides he took in "spiritual marriages" and scratchy audiotapes of him giving girls explicit instructions for sex. His journals speak of casting out men for not being humble, written around the same time Jeffs was photographed in a leather jacket atop a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

"Everyone in the church has got to take a responsibility for what has taken place," Jessop said. "In order for this to be fixed going forward, we have to take responsibility. This is a crisis for every single member in the church."

Jeffs rose to power in 2002 following his father's death, and has run the church despite being in police custody in either Arizona or Texas since 2006.

He'll be more restricted in whatever Texas prison he ends up in. Jeffs was flown to a prison intake across the state hours after being sentenced. It's there that prison officials will decide where he will serve his sentence and whether to assign him to the general prison population, safekeeping or protective custody. His telephone calls will be limited to a list of 10 people, and Jeffs will be prohibited from receiving any visitors under age 17.

Jeffs stood quietly Tuesday as the sentence was read. He must serve at least 45 years in prison: at least 35 years of a life sentence on one of the child sex charges, and at least 10 years on the other.

During the trial, prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old.

"If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree," Jeffs wrote in 2005, according to one of his journals.

Nichols referred to that passage in his closing Tuesday.

"No, Mr. Jeffs, unlike what you wrote in your priesthood records ... we don't hang convicts anymore from the highest tree. Not even child molesters," Nichols said.

Jeffs spent years crisscrossing the country as a fugitive who eventually made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list before his capture in 2006. Former church members testified that Jeffs ruled with a heavy and abusive hand, and excommunicated 60 church members he saw as a threat to his leadership.

Among Jeffs' most eccentric orders was banning the color red. Rebecca Musser, a former FLDS member who was once a wife of Jeffs' father, showed up to the sentencing in a deep red dress.

Prosecutors suggested that the polygamist leader told the girls they needed to have sex with him -- in what Jeffs called "heavenly" or "celestial" sessions -- in order to atone for sins in his community. Several times in his journals, Jeffs wrote of God telling him to take more and more young girls as brides "who can be worked with and easily taught."

When police raided the group's ranch, they found women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as underage girls who were clearly pregnant. The call that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and hundreds of children were returned to their families.

Jeffs is the eighth FLDS man convicted since the raid. Previous sentences ranged from six to 75 years in prison.

[Associated Press; By PAUL J. WEBER]

Associated Press writer Mike Graczyk in Houston contributed to this report.

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